Last semester, I had the good fortune to attend a panel discussion with four young SFS alumni now working full-time.

Of the topics that came up, one of the most interesting was the question of what to do with what I’m going to call the just-a-job. The just-a-job is the cashier job you took because you needed gas money over the summer. Or the receptionist job you took in a student affairs office on campus to have a little spending money during the school year. The just-a-job is the kind of job that is not, in any obvious way, preparing you for a career. It’s just a job.

I review resumes all the time and many students treat these kinds of jobs as afterthoughts or ask if they should take them off their resumes altogether. They suspect the job is not relevant or, worse, that employers will look down on it. Not so, based on the experiences of our SFS alumni.